Scientist at Work Blog: Calls of the Forest

Mary E. Blair is a postdoctoral researcher in the American Museum of Natural History?s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, where she coordinates the Enhancing Diversity in Conservation Science Initiative.

April 8, 2013

At 5:30 a.m., after being out from about 1 a.m. surveying for slow lorises in the dark, I was woken up by an eerie, enchanting duet. I realized through bleary eyes and ears that this sound was not my alarm, but rather a pair of serenading gibbons. Gibbons are large primates (or more specifically, small apes) that live in male-female pairs. They sing a duet together every morning, and sometimes after it rains, to let other gibbons know where they are. Luckily for you, I recorded it. It is very hard to sleep with this going on, and actually, I would argue that the Vietnamese forest can be louder than New York City in the morning.

Later that day, after saying goodbye to the gibbons, we left our first slow loris survey site within the confines of Bu Gia Map National Park, and headed back to the park headquarters. We settled in to the official guesthouse ? our home base for the last surveys of the trip.

We picked this location for more than just the accommodations. It allows us to survey the habitats along the edge of the park, including cashew tree plantations, mixed bamboo and secondary forest, and regenerating secondary forest.

Slow lorises can be found in a variety of ?edge? or human-modified habitats including bamboo forest, agroforest, and tree plantations ? not just ?pristine? forest. For slow lorises, the ability to find food in a variety of habitats could be a promising sign for their long-term survival; forested habitat continues to be lost to road and dam construction, mining and agricultural expansion, not only in Vietnam but across Southeast Asia. However, being able to survive close to civilization means it is easier for people to hunt them for use in traditional medicines and to capture them as pets.

At the beginning of my journey to Vietnam, I felt elated after spotting my first slow loris in the dark. They are so rare and shy, I thought I might not even see one. But, in fact, our teams have spotted several in the nightly depths of the Vietnamese forest.

As the trip continued, I learned so much more about the complex reasons lorises are threatened with extinction, and why it is so challenging to find out how many are left. This makes of the matter of how to address the threats to their survival all the harder.

I strongly believe that continued integration of museum-based work and fieldwork will greatly help our understanding of the biology of this endangered group of animals, and others that are also rare and difficult to find in the field. But equally important will be multidisciplinary research combining social and natural science to investigate the complexities of the wildlife trade and different cultural values related to slow lorises in Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia. I am so pleased that during this trip, my first, our team was able to collect some key preliminary information on the population status and cultural uses of slow lorises across Vietnam. Back in New York, I will use this information to design future research, and I can?t wait to come back soon to continue searching for the enigmatic culi (that means loris in Vietnamese).

If you are now hooked on slow lorises and want to know more about what other intrepid loris explorers are doing, visit the Web site of my colleague Dr. Anna Nekaris for lots of useful information. And of course you can check out our center?s Web site or follow me on Twitter (@marye_blair) to hear more about my trips back to Vietnam to search for more lorises.

Source: http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/calls-of-the-forest/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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